Bob Mulholland[excerpt from article]“It’s a little bit disappointing,” Wobschall said, adding the federal government has committed $400 million and according to a lobby group saveenergyfirst.ca, “there’s (likely) no way they could have spent that money.”

Wobschall said the program was last extended for a year, effective March 2011, but there was no confirmation of that until June.

“So you’ve really been looking at an eight-month program,” he said. “The federal government commitment to the program has been lacklustre, frankly.”--Petition to bring the program back:http://saveecoenergy.ca/save-energy-first

Chris GeorgeIt’s an attack on the very principle of free and fair elections. Not just a fundamental Liberal value, but a Canadian one:

Your right to vote.

Media reports stemming from an Elections Canada investigation have revealed a pattern of election fraud, including allegations that:

• Voters were deliberately misled about the location of their polling station;• Liberal supporters received harassing phone calls purporting to be from the Liberal Party; and;• Thousands of “instant-voters” voted without giving an address.

Sign the petition and demand a Royal Commission on electoral fraud to determine whether the Canada Elections Act and other Canadian laws are sufficient to protect the integrity of our electoral system.Don't forget to reshare this to every Canadian you know!

Kimberly Crawley"In a growth-obsessed, winner-take-all, zero-sum world there is also plenty of incentive for elite players to simply create the losers their success depends on. And they do this by ensuring that the game is rigged in their favour; by establishing rules that work to their advantage; by effectively silencing contrary voices and votes in our democracies; by suppressing critical scientific debate; by seeing to it that adequate education is put out of the reach of a growing proportion of the population and the opportunities to “play” the game are few and priced out of reach of most; by sustaining the illusion that a fair society is one of bread, circuses and casinos — albeit casinos where the house always profits and is too big to fail. Sound familiar?

Science teaches us that healthy, sustainable societies are always based on non-zero-sum, win-win principles. The $64 million question is how the 99 per cent can usefully change the essential nature of the game now against an elite that has already super-insulated itself against that eventuality."

In order to put an end to the greatest student mobilization in the history of Quebec, the provincial government has passed a special law that tries to suppress any form of protest against its policies.

This repressive law violates freedom of expression as well as the freedom of association and directly confronts student organizations, workers and all citizens.

This represents a fundamental infringement of civil liberties and constitutes a danger for any free and democratic society.

The Globe and Mail publishes an article calling for rioting against the government.

From the article:Want to hear a pitch for a movie? It’s sort of a 3-D sequel to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, except twice as weird and four times as depressing.

What’s the film’s title? I’m calling it Canada.

We find ourselves at the cusp of one of those moments in history books (not that there are many history books in the countries where bills like C-38 are routinely passed): Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his legions are trying to shovel an omnibus bill, disguised as a budget, down the throats of sleeping Canadians.

Like the border of some Third World hellhole, C-38 is mined with things likely to go boom. There is a budget in there somewhere, but also wholesale “reform” of environmental policy, tweaks to the oversight of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., changes to pension eligibilities and Laureen Harper’s quiche Florentine recipe.

Good policies? Bad policies? Doesn’t matter. Properly, each of those items should be sent to committees and considered individually. That’s how our system is designed to work. What the Conservatives have engineered isn’t illegal, merely rotten – another in a long line of tricks defiling the democratic process.

Governments congenitally allergic to transparency, addicted to secrecy and horrified of debate? “Historically, not awesome,” to quote Robert Downey’s Iron Man.

This goes way beyond an isolated event. This looks like a concentrated effort to steal votes away from non-Conservatives. Canadians need to demand a full inquiry into the election, because if these allegations are true, then the Conservatives stole the election and should all be thrown in jail.

Brian RiceForcing a women to stay with an abusive husband or face the possibility of deportation is criminal. What misogynistic, woman hating moron came up with this policy? ... Oh, right... The Hon. Jason Kenney.

NDP MP Charlie Angus may have publicly quit the microblogging site, likening it to being badgered by a drunk on a 24-hour bus ride -- but he still thinks a House of Commons study on privacy and social media requires the company’s input.

Ken MasonI felt very "old-man" when I saw a saw a clip of Bieber receiving his award, but apparently I'm not the only one who thought he was a wildly under-dressed for the occasion. Also the description of "Harper, who looks like an extra from The Office" is so well said, despite the rest of the article being poorly done.#cdnpoli#cdnpolitics#bieber#harper

TK MonastyrskiSo... Harper is at it again...Imagine if some U.S. company is awarded the contract to store your revenue documentation. Being that said documents would then be in the U.S. they would also be subject to things such as the Patriot Act and free and clear of any privacy protections (if any remain) that Canadian Law is to protect.

Why is it that the CPC and Harper are trying out things that were proven to fail in the U.S. decades ago? Oh I know. Money. Money in their pockets.#CdnPoli#Politics#Canada#CPC

Mark CrowleyNote to Mr. Romney on this paraphrase about the price of gas:"It was $1.80 per gallon when Obama came in and now it's over $4 per gallon....something something...pumping oil in by pipeline from Canada."

At $1.80 per gallon...there would be no oil in that pipeline! The oil from Canada, from the Alberta tar sands is only financially sustainable at over $85/barrel. During the depth of the Great Recession the oil sands companies would barely breaking even.#cdnpoli#debates2012

I'm not sure he should be fired for an inappropriate vote on such a small amount of money...but, I really don't like the precedent of letting this go if Ford has to end up using the 'honest mistake' defense. That argument seems to be, paraphrasing"I have my own understanding of the rules, which I have used for 13 years as a councillor, which I believe I applied consistently. But that understanding of the rules was false. I never actually read the rulebook to learn the true rules. I never even attended the orientation when I was first elected because I believed that as the son of a politician I knew enough about how the system worked already. Honest mistake."

Actually, that sounds like willful negligence to me. And that is no defense. I'd rather you have said you didn't understand what the vote was about at all. It is not acceptable to argue that some elite part of our society who happen to be born to politicians already know how everything works; that they don't need to read the rules and that if they break the rules because they made them up then it's just an 'honest mistake'. No.

Again, if this trial acquits him and he doesn't use that argument as his main defense then I guess no precedent will be set. But if that that is his primary argument then the judge needs to find him guilty because that goes against every assumption of responsible, representative government.

Mark Crowley"The new National Household Survey was filled out by just 69.3 per cent of Canadians — a far cry from the 93.5 per cent who filled out the long-form survey when it was still mandatory in 2006."

That is a huge difference resulting from making the longform census voluntary, it surely will influence the reliability of the data.

Now StatsCan is considering what questions to add to the short mandatory form in order to make up for the loss of the mandatory long form.

"Ultimately, it will be up to the federal cabinet to decide which questions go into the census."...well that's not encouraging.